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COPY 1 




VIVIEN 


W. B. MAXWELL 


Copyright, 1905 

BY 

W. B. MAXWELL 


BUFFALO, N. Y. 
1905 





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Vivien 

I. 

A few poor mortals in a Bloomsbury.* lodging- 
house had assembled to celebrate the chirstening 
of a female child with a feast of oranges; sherry, 
figs, port, and dessert biscuits. Some careless or 
superstitious person — the Irish monthly nurse, no 
doubt — had left the street door ajar, to give ingress 
to the fairies. 

And the faries had come — in force. 

Quite invisible to mortal eye, not to be heard by 
mortal ear, imponderous, imperceptible, but 
bustling, businesslike as a mortal board of directors, 
club committee, or urban council, in a hurry 
get their work through and be gone through the 
yellow fog to the other end of the town, the good 
faries and the bad faries ranged themselves to east 
and west of the shabby room for the task which 
from endless repetition had fallen into a mere 
form, a matter of routine, a wearisome incident 
of the fairy day’s work. 

‘As is usual/ the fairy chairman was saying, 
‘we will take the minutes of our last meeting as 


read — and passed. Thank you. If certain fairies 
near the door Rould have the kindness to cease 
chattering. Now then, as to this boy — girl? 
Thank you. As to this girl/ 

“Name — Vivien Shelton/ said the secetary, 
reading slowly from one of a bundle of papers. 

‘Only child. Father — Colonel Shelton — man of 
but moderately good family, yet with that un- 
reasoning pride of race which — ’ 

‘Get on — get on/ cried a bad and irritable fairy. 
‘Mother. As illustrative of the sorry manner 
in which these poor worms keep the records to 
which they attach so much imp — 9 
‘Get onf 

• ‘Mother — and this is what may appear not unin- 
teresting to fariies if they will permit me to con- 
tinue — ; and the secretary beamed a mild defiance 
to the west of the chair, on which side the evil- 
intentioned among the audience had all placed 
themselves. 

• “Mother— curiously enough— is, by descent, 
from noble stock — quite unknown to her. I have 
a note here to the effect — Royal blood. One of 
the English Henries — Henry I., II., III. Tut, tut! 
The number has escaped me. But I have it here, 
if faries will bear with me a moment/ and the 
secretary began to fumble with his papers. 

But fairies would not bear with him — not even 
the kindly-disposed. 

‘Get on — get on. To work. Shut up. Record 
the gifts and let us go/ they cried. 


■* ‘I give her vanity,” shouted a bad fairy* 

'I have pleasure in counteracting that by giving 
her — er — er — love of approbation/ said a good 
fairy — a modest, retiring fairy, shyly rising to 
register the gift and sitting down with a blush. 

‘I give her foolish self-confidence/ 

‘And I, proper self-respect/ 
j ‘Credulity/ 

‘Trustfulness/ 

‘I give her irregularity of feature/ 

‘I give her fascination/ 

And so on. It was merely formal. Vote and 
counter vote. The good and bad fairies might, 
and often did, pair and save themselves trouble by 
staying away. As a rule, the majority either way 
was too small really to work with. The good and 
bad elements just balanced each other, turning 
out, year after year, a colourless mediocre amalgam 
—the usual bundle of contradictions which com- 
pose the uninteresting average mortal. Just at 
the end of a meeting the good or bad fairies might 
now and then put in some solid unchallenged votes, 
unexpectedly getting the upper hand through the 
laziness of voters ; but in general nothing happened, 
and the thing was, to many minds, becoming a 
fairy farce. Only by trick or plot could either side 
over-reach the other — by drugging the foolish old 
secretary — long past his work — burning his notice 
papers, suppressing a batch of summonses. When 


this happened there was fun, and a saint or an 
assassin was the result. 

‘I give her vague imaginings and morbid fancies/ 
grunted a fairy bubbling over with malevolence. 

‘And I give her a sense of humour/ said a smiling 
fairy, with an ironical bow — a queen, quaint, mock 
reverence that made the last voter almost choke 
with rage. 

Then the fairies hurried away, through the fog 
which hid the twilight and the dusk which pret 
tended to be night, to a grim old house in Dover 
Street, where a little infant loardhad on this short 
January day been handsomely christened with a 
fine string of ten or a dozen names of great princes 
and lesser potentates. It was known that there 
would be a big meeting, heavy voting, and possibly 
some surprises. 

‘And now/ said the mortal father, ‘I drink to 
the health, long life, and prosperity of Miss Vivien/ 
and he raised his glass and bowed to the cradle. 

‘And may the first thing she breaks — I believe 
babies begin to break things at a very early age — 
be the chain of Devil's luck that has all his life 
tied down her poor old father." 

He was the only man present and the ladies 
laughed heartily, as though he had said something 
very amusing. And, indeed, when he lifted his 
glass, it had been in his mind to make a facetious 
little speech, to string a few mirth-provoking 


periods, a mimic display of public oratory to 
gratify and tickle the restricted intelligence of his 
wife's somewhat humble guests — fellow-way-fasers 
on life's highroad, stepping in pace for a minute 
out of sympathy while you condemn the severity 
of the gradient, rather than travelling companions 
or friends of the family. But on uttering the first 
words, he became shaken with the Strange recur- 
rent fever to which day by day at this very hour 
he was a prey : an acceleration of the pulse, a fiery 
fidgeting in the blood, an irritable activity in the 
nerve cells — an overpowering sense of physical 
discomfort, an enervating, almost nauseating, 
nostalgia — sensations which had once alarmed 
him, but which he now knew from experience to 
mean nothing more than the necessity of going to 
his club. 

As he passed up the broad staircase towards the 
regions of diurnal delight and repetitive rapture 
on the noble first floor, two old fogeys paused and 
moralised as grey-beards will, when their well- 
matured thoughts are, like the steps of the ascent, 
many though shallow. 

‘‘Now, to show how little we really know of those 
we think we know, there's that fellow Shelton. 
Know him — here — for years — but on my word, if 
challenged, I couldn't tel] you who he is or what 
he is, where he lives or how he lives.' 

‘A bit of a struggle.' 


‘Find it a struggle, eh? Then don't hurry.' 

T wasn't speaking of the stairs, but Shelton. 
I don't know, mind you, but I believe he is a very 
fine fellow — is Shelton — hides a great deal of 
misery beneath a pleasant manner and a good- 
natured word.' 

‘God bless my soul. A very noble fellow if he 
does.' 

‘Between you and I, I believe his domestic life 
has been one long martyrdom. I forget who told 
me. I think it was a man in the smoking-room one 
Sunday evening — fellow who doesn't often come 
here. You would know him. It was either a 
selfish extravagant wife — sort of woman whose 
neck I'd like to wring: or else it was a brood of 
children — ne'er-do-wells eating him up. I forget 
which. Between you and I and the post, I neaer 
much cared about Shelton till I heard it, but I was 
so touched I've been deuced civil to him ever 
since — on that account.' 

It was a really good club — some say it is the 
best — one of the old frowning-faced clubs in which 
men address the servants by name, and nearly all 
say ‘between you and I' : not one of the new 
mozaic-featured terra-cotta palaces whose thou- 
sands of members tip the waiters, and talk fault- 
less grammar with a cockney accent. 


II. 

Her father named her. 

It was perhaps characteristic of Colonel Shelton 
that he should cynically choose from that fair book 
the only woman’s name of vile association. Her 
mother was not literary — Guinevere, Enid, etc. 
‘You must decide, dear.’ She might, in truth, 
have preferred Guinevere, because Guinny would, 
to her gentle mind, have been a pleasant contrac- 
tion. After years of makeshift and contrivance, 
she instinctively sought and rejoiced in the 
secondary use, the subordinate rather than the 
obvious virtue of everything presented to het 
consideration — the cloth that will turn best, the 
sofa that makes a couch, the chest of drawers that 
changes at will to a washing-stand. Inanimate 
objects were never really friends until they had 
suffered the metamorphosis of temporary con- 
venience. The flowers taken from a re-trimmed 
bonnet had never bloomed for her as when trans- 
planted to the borders of a new straw hat; the 
heavy winter jacket, which had always seemed an 
oppressive stranger, with the lining extirpated, 
the fur removed, and the full tails cut down to the 
bone, became a light and high-spirited companion 
when worn under summer suns. She accepted the 


name of Vivien for her tardily produced child with 
a tender unquestioning smile; and then did her 
best to knock the surface sense out of it by calling 
her daughter ‘Vi.’ 

Meek, enduring, gentle creature, keeping a smile 
on pale lips and passing from ifiakeshift to make- 
shift: through kindly ruse and innocent trickery, 
getting nearer and nearer to the last and most surf 
prising, wonderful, and complete contrivance cr- 
aft — the bed that turns into a coffin. 

Vivien’s earliest recollections were blurred b\ r 
London fog. A curious, many-toned mist, hung 
over her first experiences, lifting for a little every 
now and then to show clear and fresh something 
wonderful and full of delight — like the glimpse of 
sunlit valley, bare rocks, white water, and the 
green of sloping meadows seen by climbers from 
cloud-wrapt hills. And it is so extraordinarily 
difficult for a little girl greedy of knowledge, keenly 
alive to the necessity of storing up all information 
likely to be of future service, to draw a firm line 
'between the strange and inspiriting occurrences 
“of waking hours and the completely enthralling 
adventures of dreams. 

? ‘Mamma, look. Oh do look. I told you I could 
fly, and if this isn’t flying, please say what it is.’ 

Poised on toes, from the top of the steep stair- 
case we have swooped down into the dark hall, 
have soared up again to the landing and are now, 


with perfect ease and a sense of exhilaration from 
a new form of exercise, floating round and round 
beneath the discoloured ceiling of our sitting- 
room. 

But that was a dream Alas, little girls arp 
inferior to the busy sparrows in this. They do nqt 
fly. A sad and sober truth to be accepted with 
with regret. The collective wisdom of that calm, 
slow-moving race — grown-ups — is adverse to our 
conviction, and not to be shaken on the point 
though one eagerly explains that we have done it 
not once but again and again. 

Grown-ups fill one with a pleasant sense of 
veneration, but they are not always easy to under- 
stand; and one is tempted sometimes to doubt if 
they really know everything. For instance, 
among them, a great deal too much fuss is made 
about the black deposit that is to be found on all 
objects — the window frames, banisters, white- 
stockinged knees, and open palms. It is quite 
harmless, and when passed from black hands 
across one’s warm face is indeed refreshing. 

Our house and those about it, which are exactly 
similar, one would suppose to form the most 
splendid range of buildings in this world of London 
— admirable and altogether satisfactory arrange- 
ment of the universe, for which unstinted praise is 
due to the grown-ups — if one had never looked 
upon the wide wonder of the neighbouring squares. 
Our street is silent and empty as a rule, but by 


boldly attacking the undiscovered country at one 
end of it, one comes into the unceasing tumult of 
traffic — a crash and roar, an appalling moving 
barrier to take one’s breath away. At the other 
end of the street lie the magnificent squares and 
broad joining roads, in hwich fierce, growling- 
voiced men are now busy with pick and hammer, 
clearing away gates and bars and chains and posts. 

Interesting and unlooked-for discovery, tumbled 
upon in pursuit of a line of vague research, experi- 
ments followed without settled plan, but generally 
tending towards a just knowledge of primary 
truths and main principles : By lying with your 
head on the mat in the draught from under the 
hall door you can plainly detect, the : buzz and 
crackle of the traffic, althoughoyou are entirely 
unconscious of it when standing upright. Quite 
distinct and growing louder while you listen, filling 
one’s ear with the dull grating of wheels, the clear, 
metallic tappings of countless horses’ feet. Rumb- 
ling and beating in one’s ear, even when removed 
from one’s convenient post of observation, until, 
as time wears on towards the hour of bed, one’s 
whole head is dolorously full of the phenomenon 
as it wickedly changes from a pleasant lulling 
murmur to a tearing intolerable anguish. 

‘Earache/ explain the all-knowing. Our first 
acquaintance with a full-fledged, strong of wing 
ache, although we have had baby grumblings of 
pain ere this. Earache ! One cannot question the 


decision. A long-continued torment, for which 
the cure is erroneously supposed to be cotton-wool 
steeped in hot oil: whereas it is really time, and 
nothing else. 

Earache is very bad: but it is worse than the 
dream of trouble, which now comes back again 
and again, changing in form but rigidly persistent 
in aim and intention — to distress? Slowly we 
become aware of a task to perform, an inchoate; 
indescribable matter of business to carry through, 
which is essentially, one might suppose obviously, 
far beyond the scope and powers of a small little 
girl successfully to tackle. We who know nothing 
of figures, except one of two of the humblest and 
most insignificant among numbers, are called upon 
to rearrange, count, adjust, sift out, pile up 
gigantic groups of figures — more than the world 
can contain, tumbling and slipping and changing 
from moment to moment on a floor absurdly 
bigger than the surface of the whole earth — and 
then store and stock them in dull grey sacks in 
some unknown order of which we are required 
to guess the key. Indistinct, unintelligible, alter- 
ing in character as one regards it : such is the crush- 
ing dream-labour to which we are introduced, and 
which we feebly undertake, making no progress 
which we feebly undertake) making o dnorgress 
realising that ip the nature of thingsappreciable 
progress is impossible. Whp has set so monstrous 
a task? The unknown, incalculable powers that 


rule the universe. And why have they set it? 
Because the whole fabric of life, the security ot 
immeasurable spaces which stretch beyond the 
believable all round our troubled cot, are intimately 
bound up with its prompt and unerring accom- 
pish ent. 

Certainly when one wakes in the dark, to sob 
and gasp from the crushing sense of the unachiev- 
able, then shakes it off and goes to sleep only to be 
immediately set to work again, this dream of 
trouble is very bad indeed. 

Distressingly plain as it is in its more salient 
features, there se'em to be no means by which 
grown-ups can be made to comprehend the dream 
of trouble. They confound it with this other new 
and excessive discomfort, this midnight attack, a 
hot and cold upheaving of all one’s innermost self , 
which is, it is stated, the danger that always lurks 
beneath the beautiful golden envelope of oranges. 

Even that most sympathetic and complaisant 
of companions among the grown-up race — the 
broad-aproned, dark-gowned dweller in the base- 
ment-unquestioned lord of the iron house and 
the red fire within, great chief of the half-lit world 
of glittering pots and pans, repellent wooden pails 
and seductive rolling-pins and paste-boards — even 
she confesses that most carefully chosen words 
failed to convey to her the vaguest comprehension 
of what we have been discussing. 

‘Not stomache-ache, nor headache, nor earache, 


nor toothache! Then I’m sure I don’t know what 
it an be. Now, out of the way, my dear. Fm 
going to pop this in the oven.’ 

‘Oh, let me open the door.’ 

‘You’ll burn your little fingers if you don’t mind. 
Here, take this cloth and wrap it round the hand 1.’ 

Then the door of the well-planned iron house is 
slowly pulled open — it is a heavy door, requiring 
all one’s strength to move — and the white effigy 
of a pie is placed upon the first floor of the warm 
building, and carefully shut up to undergo the 
slow and mysterious process which shall turn it 
,into the true and perfect tart for the sumptuous 
late dinner of the other lodgers. 

Truly a charming companion, our cook: so 
robust and self-reliant in the practice of her 
glorious art, and yet not so proud and overbearing 
as to reject assistance when intelligently offered. 
It is to her that we at las turn for relief, the com- 
fort of certainly whether good or bad, in a matter 
of doubt which of late has come to weigh heavily 
on our mind. How old is papa? 

‘Why getting on. Your pa must be well past 
fifty I should say.’ VsJ 

Oh dear! The cold comfort of certainty. It is 
worse, infinitely worse than we had anticipated. 
We had known that he was old, immensely old. 
We had feared that he must be much past twenty 
— the age at which the title of grown-up is assumed 


— but qfiy — probably the oldest papa in London — 
Terrible! 

‘And is mamma as old as papa?’ we falter. 

‘Lor’ no. Nothing near so old. Your ma’s what 
one may call almost a young lady. And a very 
nice lady, too. I’ve no word to say against your 
ma.’ 

Oh how pleasant to hear this — to know that the 
tremendous gulf, made by the rolling, and to us 
uncountable ' years, which vaguely stretches be- 
tween papa and us, does not divide us from mam- 
ma. In the impulse created by the good words of 
cook we take her hand, as much of the finger end 
of it as we can control, and say with strong feeling 

‘I do like you.’ 

‘And I like you, my dear,’ she says kindly. 

But we do not continue to like her long. There 
comes between us something to wipe out the past 
sweep away all memory of mutual sympathy, of 
information freely imparted, of aid readily volun- 
teered. It is a mouse. 

Surely the ingenuity of grown-up man never 
schemed and perfected anything better and finer 
than this little mansion of the mouse. With its 
clean, white wood, tin clamps, slender bars, tiny 
nail-heads, and extraordinary, but most imposing 
front door, it is a marvellous exairiple of the 
smallest, and consequently the most excellent, 
form of house-building. Arid to think that cook 


should buy so delightful a toy out of her own 
money : for herself/ to play with ! 

‘Now we must tqast some cheese and put it on 
the ’ook. Yes. The thing ’anging down from the 
roof/ 

‘Are you sure he likes cheese?’ 

The odour of the hissing fragment is overpower- 
ing. 

‘He just loves it. Can’t be too strong for him. 
I daresay he smells it and is licking his chop 
already.’ 

The hot odorous dinner is adjusted on the 
hanging table; with hospitable front door thrown 
wide, the dear little house awaits its honoured 
guest, out of harm’s way and ‘meddlesome paws’ — 
whatever that may mean — in a corner of the roomf 
and we are told to wait in patience. How long? 
A minute? More! Hours? Oh! Perhaps all day! 
And the next day! Oh dear! 

Oh ! Breath drawn deep in rapture : the mouse 
is in his house. Summoned long before we dared 
hope for the good news, we are lying on the floor 
face to face with this new strange thing of joy. 
He surpasses our wildest imaginings: a toy such 
as the cunning hand of man, the unbridled fancy 
of childhood has never fashioned — a thing alive. 
Alive, quite as alive, possibly more alive than we 
are. A grown-up amongst his miniature race: 
turning about his narrow room with agile spring, 
showing tiny paws between his bars and twirling 


a slender tail, sitting up even — looking at us with 
his pretty head on one side — bright beads of eyes 
— fluffy, furry, with whiskers, most adorable 
living toy. 

‘But see. See. He hasn’t touched his cheese !’ 

Slowly and warily, with a contented smile on 
her broad, red face, the huge woman manipulates 
the strange mechanism of the door; takes him out, 
by the tail ; carries him head downwards across the 
kitchen into the pantry, anxiously followedby 
Vivien; and lets him fall, making a little splash, 
into one of the evil-looking tubs which stands half 
full of water in the lead-lined sink. 

Why? Vivien’s heart has almost stopped beat- 
ing in excess of troubled wonder. Leaning her 
chin on the wall of the sink, she watches intently. 
Slowly, methodically, the little creature is smwi- 
ming round and round the tub. His moving 
shadow is thrown upon the white wood beneath 
the water; his long tail stretches out below the 
surface. He is altered in colour and size. He is 
quite black now, and much smaller: only his face, 
delicate whiskers 1 , and bright beads of eyes, are 
above the surface of the water. 

‘Now. Take him out. Let him run.’ 

The gigantic woman sill smiles while she ans 
swers: conveying — not in the words which one 
can hardly hear for the thump of one’s heart-beats 
— the unbearable idea of pitiless, inexorable doom. 
Never, in this world of men and mice, to run again. 


In a frenzy of horror and fear Vivien attempts 
a rescue; madly struggles in the great arms; %nd 
is carried away kicking, screaming, howling. 

From the moment in which she entered the half- 
lit pantry, it has been as though that dream of 
trouble had taken bodily shape — a gigantic, 
crushing, destroying presence, perceived without 
being seen, suddenly siring up and towering above 
her, towering above her until it blots out the very 
sunlight by its chilling, shrouding immensity. 

This tragedy of the basement marked the intro- 
duction of something new into Vivien’s life — the 
element of fear. Unreasoning, thought-stopping, 
bone-shaking terror, waking her in convulsions at 
night, to grown-ups clustered round her bed — a 
distinguished gathering including even papa — 
inquiring, consoling , almost deferential, paying a 
little girl a kind of thoughtful respect not noticed 
in this dark hour of tempestuous panic, but which 
is, one must confess, gratifying when one comes 
soberly to consider it in the calm of a sunny 
morning. 

Gradually the day seemed to conquer the night 
in Vi’s young life ; the thronged world of her 
dreams retired within the boundaries of sleep, 
baffled and driven back: no longer venturing to 
invade the solid ground of waking hours, allowing 
her to concentrate her increasing powers on the 
pursuit of knowledge undisturbed. 


No more flying, but such a mass of information, 
■borne on the murmuring gale of mamma’s soft 
voice, as to fill all empty spaces in which foolish 
fancies used to breed. 

Prayers. The dearness of lodgings ; the security 
of four-wheelers, the perils of a hansom; the com- 
fort and support of policemen in crossing main 
thoroughfares; and the beneficent God, to whose 
ear the evening and morning petitions are ad- 
dressed, wo governs even policemen, and guards 
good little girls from being run over though these 
may fail, who also watches over sparrows which 
need his care though apparently so well able to 
look after themselves that they habitually take 
the most reckless risks; the names of tsreets: 
Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road; the strange 
underlying laws that regulate and systematise the 
colour of omnibuses ; the good shops and the bad 
shops; the necessity of going to good shops in 
catering for papa even though they are also dear 
shops ; rain, thunder, and lightning ; the seasons — 
knowledge and still more knowledge — church, pot 
hooks and hangers, words of one syllable and 
‘collex ’ : additional recitations got by heart to 
stumble through with closed eyes and laboured 
breath, at mamma’s knee on wet Sundays. 

There are two rich aunts, half-sisters of papa, 
Mrs. Rogers and Mrs. Burnett by name, who pay 
occasional visits, one at a time, and express con- 
tentment at our growth and proficiency, not- 


withstanding lamentable failures in repetition of 
the shortest of collects. One of them declares that 
her own little girl of seven — greatly our senior — 
is far less advanced. ' s 

It was a pity that papa should always have been 
compelled to go out in the afternoon and stay out 
until long after Vi’s bedtime — because papa had 
always filled her with a sense of fascinating mys- 
tery, and unbounded admiration. Tall, thin, and 
black, wearing splendid dark-coloured clothes, 
with long, narrow feet in shining boots which 
never in any circumstances were to be touched by 
the maids’ blacking brushes, and constantly im- 
prisoning his trousers in a curious machine com- 
posed of varnished boards and brass screws, papa 
had been early recognized as a far grander and 
more terrible force than mamma : a source of dread 
and admiration, and, at will, of that most ex- 
quisite of phenomena, uncontrollable laughter. 
It was at once grand and awe-inspiring when papa 
occasionally, on Sundays, announced that he 
would dine at home. 

One trembled, while one gulped one’s tea and 
ate one’s bread and butter with mamma at one fend 
of the table, lest some accident should have befal- 
len the cutlets and asparagus from papa’s good 
shop. Joy or discomfort, laughter or tears, the 
whole evening seemed to hang on a thread, as papa 
lifted the dish cover, and, with puckered forehead 
and gloomy eyes, prodded the brown meat with 


his fork. Peeping over the rim of one's- cup, one 
was spell-bound, afraid to look, yet impotent to 
turn away. But if it was all right, if r the danger- 
signals, which only mamma could - properly read, 
disappeared, if the implied orders for conversation 
and merriment were issued, what a happy evening, 
what a companion, what an enchanter of a father ! 

When the hones of the cutlets had Been removed 
and the little bottle of red wine was nearly empty, 
he would talk: he would sing, in an unknown 
tongue — French — little snatches of comic songs, 
drawing down the corners of his thin-lipped mouth 
in affected woe, then tapping the side of his thin 
nose in a burst of preporterous sprightliness, 
waving his arms and pointing with gestures so 
inexpressibly grotesque that his little daughter 
would roll upon her chair in paroxysms of uncon- 
trollable mirth. Then, nia moment, he would 
pretend that there was no accasion that he could 
understand for laughter. Had he said anything 
odd or out of the way? Were we laughing at him ? 
And if we must laugh, could not we take the trouble 
to learn to laugh? • 

Then he would screw up his pallid face into a 
web of wrinkles, squirm and contort himself and 
emit the most ridiculous giggling, squealing 
noises while he rubbed his eyes with the knuckles 
of his hands — in mimicry of us and our manner of 
laughter. 

‘That's the way you laugh, young lady. You are 


doing it now. Worse than ever. I never knew 
such a child.' 

Oh happy evenings and most delightful of papas: 
now pouring water into a tumbler with the yellow 
fluid from the other bottle, and just as we return 
to our forgotten tea and neglected seed-cake, 
taking a silver knife from his waistcoat pocket, and, 
with a few deft incisions and most artful scrapings, 
converting an orange into a human countenance. 

A broad-mouthed, grinning, open-nos triled, 
small-eyed yellow face laid on a napkin across the 
top of a wine-glass, bowing and nodding and 
rolling for our behoof and speaking in papa's voice 
— saying it does not feel quite weel, is afraid it has 
laughed too much. Oh dear! Feels sick, dread- 
fully sick, oh dear, oh dear. Fetch me a basin. 

That is the end of the programme. The sick- 
ness of the orange induces such a gust of mirth that 
we cannot swallow our tea and the crumbs of the 
seed-cake go the wrong way. 

Patting us on the back and wiping our tear- 
stained face, mamma thinks we had better be re- 
moved: but papa, the enchanter, looks leniently 
upon this our great disaster and disgrace; say& 
‘Let her stay. She'll get better directly' ; and we 
feel that, after all, our offence is but a tribute ot 
his power. 

But the wrath of papa! Storms of anger more 
violent and fiercer — as it seemed to us — than the 
fury of nature: the thunder-clap that shook our 


chimneys and caused the grown-up ground-floor 
lodgers to scream, or the hail-storm that burst 
upon us one 'morning near the So-called Marble 
Arch — tornadoes which made a little girl want to 
creep under the sofa until they had blown them- 
selves out. Vi especially reihembered two such 
storms. 5 

The first was occasioned by a truly horrible 
incident. The maid or mamma— mamma with a 
white face and trembling hands appeared to con- 
fess her guilt — had maltreated the newest pair of 
those sombre trousers, officiously folding them 
sideways instead of frontways, mercilessly pinning 
them in the queer machine, and leaving them all 
through the cold hours of a long winter’s night to 
suffer the torment of distortion and constraint : so 
that they crept forth next day with the abomin- 
able traces of their torture marked in rigid, inef- 
faceable lines which seem to cry to papa for 
vengeance. 

The second was even more appalling because it 
seemed to spring up without either cause or warn- 
ing. 

Mamma had offered to go with Vi and call for 
papa at his club — the place to which papa was 
compelled to go every day — and take him away in 
her four-wheeler. Surely there could be no harm 
in such a suggestion, of which Vi heartily ap- 
proved. But it threw papa into a white heat o 
rage — which no apologies could appease — chang- 


ing to a cold, half-suppressed fury as he left US in 
our tears and disgrace, and making the smaller of 
us for the moment wish that the thin, shining- 
booted, black figure stalking down the street might 
never again return to cause mamma to cry like 
this. 


Ill, 


Mrs. Maitland, the lady principal, was kind 
to Vi Shelton; and the girls were quite wrong in 
saying that Arundel House was the worst school 
in Europe. It was not even the worst school in 
Southbourne — this fast-expanding town of schools 
of all sorts for both sexes. It was a cheap school, 
but, on the whole, it was a nice school. Boys — as 
is well known — are a race so destructive, vora- 
cious, and inappeasable that a boys’ school, if 
cheap, must be nasty also. But it is surprising — 
to those who have never tried the experiment — at 
how small a cost girls can be decently reared. 

The pity of course is that when reared they 
should not always be wanted. 

There was no hurry in learning your book. 
That was the message whispered in the hundred 
schools of Southbourne. No hurry! Take it easy. 
Schools were not schools, when considered philoso- 
phically, but wonderful life-waiting rooms. Time 
till the grown-up life-strain started, was, in the 
boys’ schools, like a blue-bottle on a window pane 
— something to be killed: in the girls’ schools, it 
was like stays — something to be borne without 
complaint, which should not be mentioned, which 
could be forgotten and then no longer felt. 


No. hurry. Never let us forget it. Summers 
languorously waned, autumns crisply fell, winters 
roared upon the sea until spring came shrilly 
whistling from the downs and drove the bathing- 
machines, from the waste place where they had 
been crouching and groaning, back to the cold 
publicity of beach and surf once more; that 
ostentatious but truly splendid nobleman, Lord 
George Sanger, came and went : and thus the long 
years glided. Sometimes, to little boys and girls 
parading on the slopes of the bold headland, 
shreds of white cloud would fall from the dappled 
sky and linger on the horizon, declaring them- 
selves to be the chalk cliffs of far-off France, 
Indistinct, uncertain, just where sky melted into 
sea, a faint outline of land — cr a bank of mist — 
would challenge thought and observation. Fifty > 
sixty miles away — impossible! It was like life — 
the life of a free and untrammeled grown-up — too 
remote to be worth the labour of thought. 

The crocodile march was horrid, but the half 
hour before tea was sweet. When days were short 
and dusk was falling, they would make Emily 
Richards — the girl with the even voice and the 
just intonation — read aloud to them. The authori- 
ties did not hold the use of gas justified before tea- 
time; but when Emily had been established on the 
form near the fire-place, some one would produce 
an end of candle and foster its flame so jealously — ; 


walking round and roujid, guarding rit from 
draught with an open hand, — that she made it 
quite safe, but of small service to the reader. 

Above all else they loved the fairy tales. In 
Mrs. Maitland's latticed bookcase there were cer- 
tain permitted volumes of tales adapted by a lady 
of quality from Gallic sources. They were pretty, 
foolish tales. 

The fairy prince — mortal in desire, farylike in 
his methods, petted godchild of the immortals, 
possessed of all the good things of the earth also — 
was the dominant figure. He was at best a dandi- 
fied, Frenchified princekin with an innate passion 
for mesalliance, refusing the marriage of conveni- 
ence which wise friends knew was the one thing 
to make a man of him, wandering off to play the 
fool with impossible Goose-girls, and so feeble and 
resourceless as a suitor that he must needs make 
princesses of them as a first step to their favour. 
Jingling, jangling, preposterous little prince on a 
long-tailed horse, he was adored by the girls of 
Arundel House. They almost swooned with 
ecstasy — some of them — as Emily, in her clear, 
full tones, recited his splendid coronation of his 
beggar-bride; and in the darkness, sufficient now 
to hide a blush, they wished that they were Goose- 
girls. f i 

Which was exactly what Fraulein Bauermann 
called them when she came in to light the gas. 

Ts there no- Shakespeare you could read? Or 


am I misinformed there was an English poet of 
that namef asked Miss Bauermann with heavy 
irony. ‘Have you no newspaper to read with more 
sense than such fiddle-de-dee? Besides, if fairy 
tales you must, why not at least Scandinavian, or 
our German-derived, read? But this French! 
Oh, no/ 

‘Oh Fraulein. They are lovely/ 

‘But fairy tales are all bad/ Miss Bauermann 
would continue. ‘They with persistence encourage 
the Dream and the Dream-habit and make unfit 
for life and Life-work. I can see by your stupid 
eyes, looking all at me like owls, wishing me to 
turn out again the gas, how bad they are: So if 
I asked you “Now will you have your tea and bread 
and butter or go back to your Dream?” You shall 
say “The Dream if you please, Fraulein.” I will 
advise Mrs. Maitland to forbid them/ 

‘Oh Fraulein, you couldn’t do anything so mean 
and unkind/ 

‘It is what I will do/ 

But the never did, of course-. She was a good 
sort, Fraulein. And she had a way of reading 
you . . thoughts — hiting off by a fluke precisely 
what a girl was thinking at the moment — that was 
rather amusing. Not such a fool as she looked— 1 
the girls admitted it ungrudgingly. 

From the first, Vivien’s best friend had 
Sprite an old girl — ohe Marion Draper. It wa« 


Marian who had instructed her young friend in ail 
the ways and by-ways of school-existence — from 
he uWe arid abuse of the globes to the method of 
making Fraulein talk about the Leipzig School of 
Medicine during lesson time. 

Marian had red hair and the most lovely blue 
eyes you ever saw. They were quite dark by gas- 
light, but by day, and especially in sunshine, they 
were the strong blue of a cloudless sky or the 
water on the wild north coast of Devon where 
Marian had been born. Her father-?-£he told 
Vivien — was Vicar of a little stone-built village, 
and the most beautiful church in the world r 
perched on the biggest of all the green hill-tops, 
with the slate walls of the tremendous cliffs close 
to the lichgate — so cloWe that when the wind ha 
to the lichgate — Wo cloWe that when the wind h 
howled all night above the vicarage chimneys, 
Marian and her brothers and sisters in the morning 
always looked first at the black beach before they 
raised their eyes to the place where the church 
ought to he. 

She told Vivien also of the richness of the 
Devonshire pasture , of the richness of the Devon- 
shire meat, and of the fabulous, unbelievable, 
Monte Cristo richness of the Devonshire cream; 
and, while she spoke of all these wonders of thte 
west, she showed the softened eye, the tremor of 
voice, the glowing face of the true Devonian far 
away from the loved land. 


‘Oh Vi, you must come and see for yourself. 
Oh Vi, you must come home with me next time/ 
Vivien, found a friend too in the solid Miss 
Bauermann. Their friendship began with an od 
little Wecret between themselves and shared b 
none. One day, when the crocodile was waiting 
for the word of command to march, tragedy broke 
its ranks. A milkcart, rattling round the corner, 
ran over a dog, and killed it. All the girls suffered, 
but Vivien suffered most of all. She thought she 
was to blame: the dog had been looking at her 
when the , death-dealing cart struck.it. She could 
not sleep at night; she sat with staring eyes by 
day; and at last, after three days, the, doctor was 
sent for. The doctor suggested a pill, and hoped 
he would find the patient better in the morning. 

, ‘Vivien, are you awake? So. As I have thought. 
Miss Bauermann had come to her in the middle 
of the night, while all the school slept; and now, 
sitting on the edge of the bed, she became gaily 
guttural. 

‘Ach. I haf some most glorious news for you. 
That little dog was not killed/ 

‘Oh Fraulein, how do you know?’ 

But Fraulein stoutly maintained that she did 
know. Some g. .eat physician had taken the cas 
in hand, and so completely restored the dog that 
it could now ‘leap and run and gambolling play/ 
Miss Bauermann knew: but no one else was to 
know for the present. 


■ In confidenz! I haf early told you who love dogs, 
But it is a secret confidenz between you and me, 
Now sleep, little one. Happy earns/ 

Oh the exquisite relief in the respite from pain! 
No more tearing of entrails as imagination drags 
out the unseen strong and clear as the seen, re- 
morselessly driving us on +'rom the torment of fact 
through each phase of the infinite torture of fancy, 
Respite from pain, the warm comfort of tears, 
sleep — and in the morning our doctor taking all 
the credit, believing that he had lowered the tem- 
perature, steadied the pulse, and cured the patient 
with his silly old pill. Miss Bauermann, smiling 
and thinking perhaps of the Leipzig School of 
medicine, felt that she could spare the doctor his 
little triumph; but she was obdurate when Vivien 
often pleaded for permission to let one or two girls 
into the secret. 

‘Not yet must you tell. I am myself not sorry 
because to you it is a good lesson. Confidenz is 
sacred. You must never betray. That is vile — to 
betray a confidenz. For whatever cause it is ever 
vile/ 

Then sometimes branching into ethical discus- 
' sion — a philosophical consideration of any abstract 
question being Fraulein's only , notion of a cosy 
■ chat — she would give Vi her views on Reticenz as 
a feminine virtue. 

‘Unt still keep something to yourself you will not 
tell to any. What! Your own poet, Vifien, and it 


is I, a foreigner, who first quotes it. Fie! I would 
myself have written osi things, not only somrh. 
Reticenz for us women is what courage to a man 
can be — to my mind. It is that what gives the 
price to the gift a woman can give — herself. If to 
all without reticenz, then how is one more given 
.than the rest? How shall her indulgenz and com- 
plaisenz in the after-cold of his strong seasoned 
thought remain* so all-superlative in price but as 
told by her reticenz to all but him?’ 

When Fraulein chatted in this cosy fashion it 
was impossible not to regret that it should, as it 
were, be all wasted — out of class. 

' *1 haf spoken of great things — of the crown of a 
woman’s life — but in the very small the same I 
say. Reticenz, Reticenz. Unt still keep some- 
thing to yourself/ 

Then perhaps, with a fair breeze of Teutonic 
eloquence behind her, Fraulein would spread her 
sails and run on from this narrow channel of root- 
idea to the broad sea of not-quite-to-be-so-easily- 
grasped secondary deductions, and, suddenly 
remembering that she had a small consort, would 
bring up into the wind’s eye in order to find out if 
the little craft was safely following in her wake. 

‘Haf you so far comprehended?’ she would ask, 
abruptly. 

‘Ach! You baby English girls! When does 
your reasoned thought begin — twenty — thirty — 
more?’ 


‘But no/ she added, resolutely. ‘ I will have 
my lesson go home somehow. See. You are to 
pretend I am speaking truth . . . Vifien, I am 
unhappy because I have killed one. Yes a cruel 
murder committed I know not why. <I..was mad, 
but now the police hunt me. . . . Oh! My God, 
there is one. A policeman. Oh Vivien! Now, 
quick, answer now. Shall you tell him?’ 

‘Oh no, Fraulein. I couldn't— -even if it wasn't 
pretence/ 

‘Komm! That rings true after all. And haf no 
fear but you would rightly do to keep my confidenz. 
Let him who is paid find out himself if he can. 
When you are old enough to comprehend I wil 
expose the governing logic of the why-yomwould* 
rightly-do*' . , . . 

Good old Fraulein — as the girls used to say* 


IV. 

- V ;i 

Vivien had come home for the holidays to papa/& 
lodgings in Berkeley Street, Chelsea. 

‘Steady with the box/ said Mrs^ Page, papa's 
landlady. ‘Clumsy feller! It is a big ‘un though/ 

Vivien looked round the shabby sitting-room 
and shivered. 

‘Here you are — why you're quite a young lady 
and your pa spoke of you as a tiny tot. . . . Yes, 
he's out and won't be back till late. But to-mor- 
row he's a-going to give you a treat — an all day 
out, if not a drencher. And your dinner he ordered 
his own self. “A sole and a sweetbread, Mrs. 
Page — so digestible for children," says your pa, 
“and something nice from the pastrycook/" 

The visitor's sensation of numbling cold melted 
beneath the warm stream of kind words. What a 
dear thoughtful papa, after all. The fire in the 
iron grate began to glow with home-like welcome. 
This was home. There were papa's books — Peer- 
ages, Landed Gentrys, Army Lists. There was 
the trouser-pressing machine. 

The dinner was charmingly served by kind, if 
foolish, Mrs. Page. Her favourite subject for dis- 
course appeared to be the colonel, for whom she 
plainly entertained a profound admiration. 


Vivien's grey eyes shone with pride. 

“Well — you know Tve been in service — with the 
best families — but I never see such perfect man- 
ners. So easy, yet so grand with it all — But you’re 
neglecting your dinner miss — My talk — ?’ ' 

‘No, please go’on— I like it/ 

‘Why true — You ought tb be very proud of your 
pa. I’ve heard him with pay own ears to my girl — 
me standing on the kitchen flight quite unknown 
to him — “My complimins to your mistress — yes 
my complimins (with a pause to enjoy the grate 1 - 
fying word) and bid her be so good as procure me 
a copy of the Mornin ’ Post” 

‘But, mind you, he’s spoilt me for other lodgers,’ 
she adds with foolish complacency. 

‘Yes, miss — he’s kept my spirits up. I’ve ’ad a 
lot of trouble — with my ’usband — and my stepson, 
Not to speak of the landlord. We are all under 
Not to speak of the landlord. We are all under 
the Earl of Eaglesham about here — ground land- 
lord you know — and the leases running out. I 
suppose he presses on them you know, and they 
press cruel hard on us — knowing he’ll show' no 
mercy at the end of the lease. There’s three 
between him and me you’ll understand, but it’s 
him that I blame — and a great nobleman too! 
What makes it so cruel is the neighbourhood’s 
going down. This street isn’t what is was. There’s 
parties in the house opposite ain’t no better than 
they ought to be — and the same thing, only worse, 


in 'arf the houses lower down — towards the 
river — ' 

Vivien expressed sympathy because Mrs. Page 
had become doleful. It was a relief when she 
picked up her favourite thread and her w^eak, 
colourless face brightened. 

‘Your pa's too good for this street. ... I shall 
stop my chatter if you don't eat. It's the colonel 
who's encouraged me to run on like I do. What a 
man with the ladies! I wonder he ain't never 
given you another ma before now. Your pa's like 
a boy when he gets among the ladies. Like a 
naughty boy,' and she tittered. 

It seemed to Vivien, lying awake that night in 
the darkness of her small room at the back of the 
house, that she was a little child again. Memories 
rendered sleep impossible. The street was more 
silent than the Bloomsbury street, and there was 
no sound within doors but the ticking of a clock on 
the stairs. No other real sound to break the op- 
pressive silence, as she knew ; but so many ghosts 
sounds! For instance: the sound of doors softly 
opened and closed; then a footstep approaching 
our door; the turning of the handle, and the foot- 
step close to our bed, and that light fluttered 
breath — with fatal unguessed meaning in its hurry 
now gently painting by our pillow. But 0 ghost of 
that loved dead voice, may not you too come to us? 

‘Vi — my darling. You ought to have been 
asleep hours ago.' 


Theft the evil wakeful spell used to be broken 
and we slept. Suddenly, as in those dead Blooms- 
bury nights, papa comes home. Now he is walking 
about in his room immediately beneath ours. 
Flushed by a daring hope or unreasoned baby-girl 
fancy, Vi is more feverishly wide-awake than ever. 
He will know where we are sleeping, or ought to be 
sleeping — will it occur to him, when he has put on 
his slippers, to come up and break the spell for us 
by a midnight word of kindly greeting? 

Evidently, it does not occur to him. Ere long 
we realise that he has gone to bed, and is — yes — 
no, it is a sad wind rising from the lonely river, or 
the swinging branches of neglected trees in some 
deserted garden. But no again, it -s our papa, 
rhythmically, steadily snoring. 

‘And now, Miss Vivien/ said Colonel Shelton at 
breakfast — ‘I am your slave for the day. Com- 
mand me — ’ 

It really was too much of an honour. 

‘Everything smiles upon us — the weather fore- 
cast is propitious. Where shall we go?’ 

He had been glancing through the morning 
paper, and, while he read, Vivien had timidly 
studied him. He was the same, and yet not the 
same. Something had gone from him : something 
had come to him. He was older and thinner; the 
big beaklike nose seemed more prominent, in a 
narrower face; the hollows on the sides of his tern- 


pies were more hollow; and there were bluish 
shadows and minute purple pencillings of surface 
veins which were quite new and strange. He had 
less hair of any colour, and far less of the black 
hair which she remembered. Had there been any 
grey? Certainly there had been none white. 
Majesty and awe-inspiring farce had slipped from 
the outer case of our Parent-mystery. 

Now, with his good-humoured and yet enig- 
matical smiles, his kindly but still ambiguous 
phrases, and the light so keen and nevertheless so 
ucertain of his moving eyes, he was recovering 
his child : spanning t he gulf of years with a rapidly- 
constructed bridge of bantering conversation. 

There is Madam Tussaud’s par exemple , The 
proper study of mankind is man. Would you like 
to see the immortality which can be given by wax? 
Or the Zoo? The Tower — most interesting to 
historical students. Or the Crystal Palace — or— 
bright idea! Greenwich ? What say you, young 
lady? Choose for yourself? 

‘It is so difficult. They all sound so nice. — The 
Tower, of course, would be — ’ 

‘One moment! I should have said that in the 
event of your selecting Greenwich — we should go 
there by water — on a steamer — and would see the 
Tower ett passant ? 

‘Oh then Greenwich, please. I should love that. 

‘Quite sure? 7 

‘Quite. Thank you, papa. It **good of ybu? 


‘Good — nonsense. It will be as much a treat to 
me as to you. Indeed. I will now confess, Green- 
wich was what I hoped you would choose. At the 
birthplace of Eliza, I can combine a little business 
with my pleasure/ 

Then, the matter being settled so pleasantly, the 
light seemed to die out of papaVeyes, the shadow 
of a gloomy cloud seemed to fall upon his animated 
face, and he became, in a moment, absorbed by 
his Morning Post. 

He really was very little altered. Here were the 
same sombre clothes, the rigid lines of the trousers 
same sombre clothes, the rigid lines of the trousers 
as they fell , tiff and tsraight about his fleshless 
legs, the long, narrow feet in varnished boots, and 
the same scruplous attention displayed as he took 
the white silk scarf from Mrs. Page and wrapped 
it carefully about his skinny th rat. This black 
overcoat might be the very same old garment, but 
for the astrachan collar and cuffs and the grand 
frogs and braidings. 

As he took his shining hat he looked steadily at 
his young companion. 

‘Let us inspect her, Mrs. Page. You are not 
exactly at the top of the fashion, Vi, but no 
matter. That hat is certainly demode. Not the 
newest shape — eh, Mrs. Page? Why do k thev still 
dress you in black — I wonder. But what is this? 
The jacket! Turn rpund — again. This is not right 
of Mrs. Maitland. • It is simply Worn out/ 


Vi had trembled and turned pale. Her black 
cloth jacket had been patched and pressed and let 
out and added to and generally tinkered for so 
many years, and now the April sunshine seemed to 
mock at it in its decrepitude, striking out rainbow 
fire from polished naples surfaces, and breaking 
its darktoned folds into a scale of undesirable 
tints: browns and greens and neutral blues — but 
never once illuminating a true strong-bodied black. 

‘What can we da?’ said Colonel Shelton, dis- 
consolately. ‘Does your wardrobe offer no alterna- 
tive?’ 

‘I have a grey fur tippet — just for the neck. If 
I wear that I can do without this.’ 

‘Fetch it — ’ said Colonel Shelton. Then — 

‘Much better; far more comme il faut 

‘You don’t think, sir, she will feel the want of 
the coat, said Mrs. Page. 

‘Never, I should imagine, ’said Colonel Shelton, 
looking at the disgraced garment, ‘if she takes any 
pride in her personal appearance. ... Oh, you 
mean to keep her warm. — The day promises to be 
fair. What do you think, Vivien?’ 

Vivien was absolutely certain that she would not 
feel cold. 

As they made their way through ugly streets 
that led to the river’s side, Colonel Shelton pointed 
out the characteristics of the worst, period of 
English architecture, and touched upon the de- 
pressing influences of London. 


‘Why don’t you come and live at Southbourne? r 
said Vi, shyly sliding her hand into his. I wish 
you would.’ 

‘Alas, my dear, we are not free agents. But’ — 
disengaging his hand — ‘you mustn’t do that. 
Does Mrs. Maitland allow girls of your age to walk 
in that manner? It is not becoming. Indeed it is 
never done— except by infants or vulgarians.’ 

She explained* that it was only a silly trick 
taught her by the ^irls >; and not advised by the 
authorities. 

On the steamboat pier an inclination to use her 
handkerchief and a sense of absolute disaster 
simultaneously possessed her. It would be too 
dreadful ! She would not believe it. Then, first in 
abstraction, and immediately 's afterwards from 
panic, she sniffed violently. She } had left it in the 
jacket on the chair! 

Papa was quick to understand , and ore the 
shock better than one dared to hope. He offered 
a soft, silk, perfumed, cream-coloured, folded, 
splendid friend in need. 

‘Give it to Mrs. Page on your return,’ said its 
owner: grimly but not ferociously. 

Then came the boat and they were soon fairly 
started on their journey. It was quite early in 
April and there were few passengers. Above the 
stone wall of the embankment the budding plane- 
trees feebly strove to hide the red bricks and white 
woodwork of stately and fantastic houses. Huge 


factories, strange towers, and monstrous chimneys* 
rising out of the water on the further shore, slipped 
by dark arid frowning — work confronting wealth* 
and ever reminding the spic and span, desirable 
residences — ‘But for us you could not have been/ 
Sunshine and movement, dancing water, gardens* 
more houses— an unrolling panorama that suffers 
sudden, eclipses as bridge after bridge looms* 
descends, and sparkles again astern in its splendour 
of sunlit spring-painted iron. 

But it was cold. There was the print of the 
wind flying across the surface! the rive . . , then the 
fierce patter of the rain — gone in a minute Nature 
in her frolicsome spring mWod, but with that touC 
of cruelty in her fun which Vivien knows of already *. 
Very soon the teeth of Vivien began to chatter. 

‘What the dickens are you doing?' asked the 
colonel. 

But she would not confess, 
said papa, with displeasure in his voice, as he 
turned up his fur collar. ‘Come over here/ 

On a bench behind the sheltering paddle-box it 
was warmer and altogether more comfortable, 
although one lost a certain amount of the view. 

‘When we come to where David Copperfield 
washed the bottles, will you tell me, papa?' 

‘Oh, you know your Dickens already, young 
lady/ 

And indeed, it seemed that her acquaintance 
with that particular Master was greater than papa's 


for he soon puzzled his daughter by confounding 
Nigel — when cited as a waterside character — with 
somebody out of Gretii' Expectations. But he knew 
Mr. Thackeray. 

'Ever read the Book oj Snobs , Vi? No? Ah, read 
that Marvellous book! As true now as on the day 
it was written.' 

Vi's impressions of Greenwich were altogether 
pleasant. 

Endless piles of noble buildings, great spaces 
behind high railings, with extraordinarily polite 
guardians — sat-seasoned veterans — at the gates, 
anxious to tell you where to find everything. 
Outside the gates tramways, dirty streets, and a 
hill — with a baloon — no, the top of the observa- 
tory. Inside, when one had found one’s way, still 
nobler buildings of grey stone, stretching far on 
either hand, twin domes, and vast cloisters run- 
ning back — the chapel, as we are told, on one side: 
the painted hall, on the other. The painted hall, 
lofty beyond belief: stone floor, and pictures all 
round, reaching high, out of sight, and sense, pre- 
vailing tone dull gold, rich brown — the marmalade 
pudding of school, but gilded, and with coloured 
fruit — sea fights most terrible — sailors stabbing, 
grasping, tearing in the water itself. Then the 
Nelson relics, up the steps, in the raised portion at 
the end of the hall — like a stage. His white waist- 
coat; with a stain, from collar downward, corres- 
ponding with bullet hole in coat. His faded stars— 


so splendid in their dying fire upon the empty 
breast. 

Then out again — in the bright sunlight — be- 
neath the blackened corices, by the weather- 
soiled columns, and, beyond all, the low trench of 
the river — brown-sailed barges and vast steamers, 
rusty red, gliding slowly by and venting melan- 
choly hoots. 

Only a glance at the Museum — for papa was 
♦showing signs of weariness — full of models of ships , 
and a peep into the room containing the remains 
of the Franklin evpedition — dreadful docketed 
trifles of that tragedy, making the cold breath of 
the deadly ice-wind; chill and numb one's heart 
while one sadly looked. 

That is a form of curiosity which has cost the 
world very dear/ said papa, doubtless unwilling 
to betray his emotion. ‘And what the dickens 
they could do with it, if they found the Pole and 
brought it home with them to-morrow, I for one 
have never understood. Mrs. Maitland would 
know, of course.' 

Vivien had especially admired the inner guar- 
dians of the place — in their curious flat hats, long 
dark coats and brass buttons, so polite to all the 
world, as anxious as Miss Bauermann to instruct 
and make clear— only insisting, like cautious old 
fighting men, on disarming you — no umbrellas or 
sticks to be retained on any pretence whatever. 
To one of these dignified guides, who had been of 


► the greatest aid and comfort throughout their tour 
of inspection, papa bade good-bye with much 
urbanity. Then, as an afterthought, he sent V 
back to make a present. Vi shyly presented the 
two pennies with a grateful smile, and with a smile 
and a fine salute the old fellow pocketed them. 

That gentleman your father, miss? Tell him I 
was overcome like by his generosity. Good-day, 
miss, and God bless you and watch over you, my 
little lady*; and the old chap stood smiling and 
saluting till she was gone. 

Vivien most faithfully reported the message and 
quaint benediction, and Colonel Shelton frowned, 
hunched his thin shoulders, and then laughed as 
though much diverted. 

He ordered luncheon at the waterside hotel, and 
there left Vivien while he went about his business* 
T ipight take you with me/ he said doubtfully. 
*It is only to pay a visit — to certain connections 
of ours. But one th whole, I think you will be 
better here. You might be in the way.’ 

It was an engaging view out of the wide win- 
dows of this grand coffee-room — a little iron-railed 
garden with sooty laurestins in tubs; coloured 
lamp glasses hanging on wires all around and 
about it; a gigantic crane close by, busy with 
mysterious building operations; the river, opening 
wider and fairer below, but with ugly mud-banks 
which a slimy silent wave covered and exposed 
again when one of the steamboats passed. 


&ut for slight pangs erf 'hunger the time woulck 
tyiave flown until papa was back again rubbing his 
hands, laughing gaily, and calling for the first 
course of their meal. 

It was a dreadful repast. Aided by the experi- 
ence of bygone days, she realised in a moment that 
the visit had been a success. Papa had prospered 
on his errand, and was now papa at his best and 
brightest. Cheered by his food and wine, he gos- 
siped: making mock and making merry in his old 
way, not waiting for your answer if you were slow 
to give it, not troubled if you did not understand, 
ndt seeming sometimes to care 'to make himself 
understandable. Enigmatical, stimulating, en- 
trancing, mysterious enchanter of a papa! 

Yi did not attempt to shine in the conversation, 
but sat back in her chair, contented, enraptured 
<to sit thus honoured, picking up such crumbs of 
the intellectual feast as might be to her possible. 

‘Are you superstitious, Vi? Mind spilling sal 
and that sort of thing? Haven’t you ever felt a 
strong disinclination to learn your lessons on a 
Friday? I halt going under ladders. It makes me 
shiver — especially if there’s a beggar with a paint 
pot up aloft. But a superstitious old friend of 
mine — an Irishman — got run over by a cab in 
going off the pavement to avoid one — arid was 
killed instantaneously. Never remembered till 
’days afterwards that he had -sat down thirtten to 
’dinner the night before. Oh very sad indeed. 


Well, you and I have been under a lot of ladders 
this morning — on those bridges — but I crossed my 
thumbs and whispered bad luck to solicitors. 
Perhaps that broke the spell — ’ 


Y. 


‘Yes, I thought you f d like Greenwich' — Mrs. 
Page had said last night — ‘when he tald me, before 
you came, as how he was a-going to take you there 
I knew you'd enjoy it. It's a rare place for an out. 
And I shouldn't wonder if he hadn't planned 
another surprise for you to-morrow.' 

Vi was deep in thought. Here it was again — 
that mystery of free will and predestination so 
often discussed at Southbourne — but suddenly 
assuming concrete form and bringing more light 
to the troubled thinker than all Mrs. Maitland's 
explanatory argument. She had selected Green- 
wich herself. The choice had lain with her, and 
yet he had known what her choice would be. Most 
wonderful ! 

‘Another surprise' — she had said after a long 
silence — ‘Please tell me, will you?' 

‘No, no,' Mrs. Page had replied, archly. ‘That 
would be telling indeed.' 

This moaning Vi had breakfasted alone and then 
gone for a stroll to amuse herself until Colcne 
Shelton should have begun the day. 

He was standing in front of the window, when 
on her return, she came into the room. He was 
comporting himself in rather an odd fashion— 


shuffling his feet, bowing again and again, laying 
his hand upon his breast, kissing the tips of hi# 
fi gers a d wavi g this stra ge salute across the 
empty road to the appare tly blank face of the 
house opposite. There was something at once 
sinister and foolish in these antics — like the clumsy 
amatory dance of a very wicked old bird of weak 
and moulted plumage — something to cause pain 
and regret to a child although unable to understand 
why. 

He turned to gree this daughter . in an angry and 
yet a confused manner. 

‘Oh there you are. I wondered where the dickens 
you had got to.’ 

By the side of his breakfast-cup and his Morning 
Post lay his well-worn, well-read Peerage, open at 
the letter H; and very soon, while Mrs. Page was 
laying out the metal-covered dishes, he had re- 
covered his composure sufficiently to mention to 
his daughter in a light and easy tone that he had 
dined last night with the Earl of Helensburgh, and 
was now refreshing his memory as to the least 
well-known of his many famous seats. Naturally, 
he would not at the club have given the style of a 
noble friend in so r ull a manner, but when addres- 
sing children— and landladies — it is as well to be 
explicit. He did not, on this occasion, add that 
Lord Helensburgh was a schoolboy of fourteen. 

‘Lor’ now/ said Mrs. Page, in awe and admira- 


tion, ‘and was the Ead of Eaglesham also of the 

party, sir?’ 

‘No/ said Colonel Shelton, affably, ‘he was not 

present/ 

Immediately after finishing his breakfast, and 
while seeking a match to light his first cigarette of 
the morning, papa was kind enough to disclose the 
nature of his second surprise. It was this..' Vivien 
was to go upstairs, pack her trunk, and prepare to 
depart on a visit to her aunt, Mrs. Regers at Streat- 
ham. 

‘You will have a livelier time there than is 
possible here/ the colonel considerately explained 
‘and, to be quite frank, I am, at the moment, so 
driven for time — by business affairs — that — that 
well, it will be a relief to me to know that you are 
enjoying yourself with Emily.’ 

‘But does she expect me?’ Vivien asked. 

‘She does, my dear. A very proper question? 

I telegraphed to her, before you were up, to say 
you were coming and what train she was to me^t 
you by/ 

So a cab was called; the big box was brought 
down; and Vivien was given a half-sovereign and 
ten shillings in silver, to carry her to Mrs. Rogers 
and thence, at the termination of her visit, onward 
to Southbourne. With a compliment on being so 
well able to take care of herself (as she had proved 
last night), and the expression of his complete 
confidence in her discretion, and capability cf 


conducting this little trip wisely and well, papa 
kissed her, wished her bon voyage, and bade her 
adieu. 

Vivien made no mistakes; showed herself well 
worthy of the trust reposed in her, and in due 
course arrived at the correct station to find her 
aunt waiting for her with a neat little brougham 
and a large grey horse. Mrs. Rogers, fat and red 
of face, and elderly, was to Vivien as a total strang- 
er who bore no resemblance to memory’s vague 
picture of the old-time visitor in Bloomsbury. 
Dimly Vivien recalled the impression that of the 
two tall aunts this was the harder and less unbend- 
ing, and there was a sharpness and stern decision 
in her manner of reception which confirmed the 
accuracy of the early judgment. Vivien had 
wished that she was bound for Mrs. Burnett, s well- 
remembered mansion, rather than Mrs. Rogers’ 
unknown dwelling, and she wished it more than 
ever now. 

That box must be delivered by the company/ 
said Mrs. Rogers, authoritatively, ‘I certainly 
cannot take it on the carriage.’ 

‘Is it a long way to where you live, aunt?’ 
Vivien inquired, when the grey horse had trotted 
off with them. 

‘I am not taking you to where I live, but to your 
Aunt Kate, to Sydenham. Three miles. Not more. 
There has been a mistake. A telegram miscarried, 
very likely. Your father is the most careless and 


unbusinesslike of living men. My husband and I 
know that only too well.' 

So it seemed that Vivien’s wish was, after all, to 

be realised. 

The house of the Burnetts had undergone that 
sad transformation which befalls most things 
known in early youth and seen again after years. 
The stately stone mansion had shrunk into a 
dingy stuccoed insignificance; the entrance and 
the round drive were ludicrously small, so that it 
seemed foolhardy for the coachman and the grey 
to attempt them ; a mean little evcrescence on one 
side of the house alone marked the position of the 
vast, mysterious billiard-room ; the noble hall door 
was narrow, low, and shamefully in need of paint. 
What had seemed a well-maintained palace, fit 
abode for a merchant prince, had sunk into a poor, 
pretentiously-devised, ill-built, unkempt suburban 
villa. 

Mrs. Burnett seemed by no means prepared for 
her visitors. With a surprised air and ruffled 
manner, she bade Vivien remain in the drawing- 
room while she had a few words with her sister in 
the library. 

‘Emily, you ought to be ashamed of yourself/ 
said Mrs. Burnett in the hall. The loud, angry 
tone carried each bitter word through the drawing- 
room door. ‘Foisting her upon me at such a time. 
Anything more underhand I never — ’ 

Then the library door closed with a bang, and 


Vivien heard nothing further. She walked across 
to the big French windows and stood lokingo at 
the garden, and beyond it, over miles of red roofs, 
to green fields and the low hill behind which the 
glass towers of the Crystal Palace glittered bluely 
and coldly in the weak spring sunlight. 

Mrs. Rogers at last drove away from the house 
in a whirlwind of rage — or perhaps simulated fury 
— having squarely stood her ground, and success- 
fully carried out the operation on which she was 
engaged. 

'And I never want to see her face again/ cried 
Mrs. Burnett, flinging herself down in one of her 
velvet chairs before the fireless grate. 'Though she 
is my own sister. God forgive me. No more heart 
than those tiles. Oh, Vivien, oh, my dear, I am a 
very unhappy woman/ and Mrs. Burnett burst 
into tears. 

But it was cold work sobbing and rocking one- 
self in this large, fireless saloon, so, in the midst of 
her distress, she proposed an adjournment to the 
dining-room, where coals burned cheerfully. 

Here, after nibbling a biscuit and drinking a 
■couple of glasses of sherry — a refreshment which 
she regretted that her niece would not share — the 
poor lady dried her tears, and disclosed the causes 
of her trouble. 

Vivien had come to a house of ruin. In the petty 
estate ruled over by the merchant princes of the 


Burriett dynasty things had been going wrong fot 
years. 

‘Nothing can save him. The crash may come 
at any minute. It's for that I’ve sent them all 
away — poor dears. They're in lodgings at South 
sea with Miss Chudleigh the governess. I forget 
if she was here when you came that Christmas « 
Oh what will become of them? They will have 
to go out into the world and earn their living — my 
dear girls will. And my Lawrence — you remem- 
ber your cousin Lawrence — will never go into the 
Army, as he’d set his heart on. . . . 

‘You are old enough to understand all I tell you, 
and to sympathise — aren’t you, dear? You’ve 
read of such things in your story-books — haven’t 
you? The kind father coming back to his fine, 
rich, well-found home — for I docall it a fine house/ 
and Mrs. Burnett looked round with tearful pride 
— ‘for people in our position, and God knows I 
never longed for more but prayed on my knees to 
keep it — coming home I say to tell his wife and 
children they are — beggars. Well, you see it acted 
under your eyes now. That’s what’s fallen on 
your miserable aunt. 

‘Only it’s come to me more gradual than in the 
books. I’ve seen it coming. I’ve felt it coming— 
I’ve done all I could — put down my carriage- 
after eighteen years, Vi — reduced my establish- 
ment, dropping to three in this great house where 


seven, yes and sometimes eight have been kept 
ever since my marriage day — ’ 

Vivien remembered the army o f beribboned 
maids. 

‘And he might have been saved. There was 
hope a fc first — if a hand or two had been stretched 
oat, he could have kept his head above water. 
But not one. Not one, Vi. Not even his wife’s 
only sister’s husband. It wasn’t till then that he 
despaired— mnce then he hasn’t r aced it as he ought 
He has looked for consolation where he ought 
never to have sought it. Here/ said Mrs. Burnett, 
with a meaning glance, laying her hand on the 
sherry decanter and replenishing her glass with a 
sad, slow action o r the arm. 

‘That’s wrong and cowardly, Vivien — -though I 
say it. But it’s not the worst thing which a man 
ean do, and a good wi^e— as God knows, I’ve been 
to him — can make allowances *or that. But what 
is killing me is the consolation he ha sought out- 
side, this house. You’re too y ung to understand 
that — I know. But this much I can say; and have, 
to my own children — Their ^ather has not been as 
%ith^ul a husband to me — these last dark years 
especially — -as I have « : wife to him — * and Mrs. 
Burnett wept again. 

‘When I humbled myself to Emily — she is 
younger than I am— going on my knees to beg aid 
—not money, but the support which Rogers 
give — for he has prospered where Burnett has 


'gone down; and his name, without putting his 
hand to paper, might have stemmed the tide — 
she flung that in my face — Burnett’s infidelity — 
to me* her own only sister. Not content to refuse, 
but deals me that stab: the cruellest cut one 
woman can give another. 

‘And now you have some inkling of your Aunt 
Emily and can see what you may expect from her. 
Knowing our situation only too well — and never 
been near me for months — she comes to plant you 
in the midst of my troubles, rather than face the 
little inconvenience you might have caused her 
because iri the thick of her spring-cleaning. 
Rather than have a bed put up in the bathroom — 
anywhere, if in truth all her rooms were dis- 
mantled as she declares, she turns you from her 
door and thrusts you on me, her ruined sister.’ 

Vivien assured her sorrowful, but still loving 
aunt that she now thoroughly understood, and 
asked that a cab might be fetched to take her back 
to the railway station, whence she would proceed 
by the next train to Croyden, and thence again to 
Southbourne. If she failed to find her box still at 
the station, it could be sent after her. 

‘Oh, don’t go away like that, dear — don’t leave 
me — not to-day — not till to-morrow,’ said Mrs. 
Burnett. It’s wretched here, I know* but stay 
with me till to-morrow. You console, and comfort 
me by having some one to tell my troubles to. 
It’s done me more good than you could under- 


stand, to have my cry out and talk it all over with 
some one who can .sympathise. Mallock is a good 
creature — you remember Mallock — she was in the 
nursery — but it’s not the same with her. She is 
not one of the family, and I have to keep things 
back. My loneliness is dreadful. Do stay over the 
night. Ten to one your uncle won’t come back 
Night after night he stays away, and if he does 
come home you needn’t be in his way.’ 

So Vivien kissed the tear-stained, flabby face of 
poor Aunt Kate, and promised to make it a one- 
night visit as urged. 

It was a long, sad day — during which Mrs. Bur- 
nett seemed to seek support or stimulant, if not 
consolation, both at and between meals from the 
big mahogany sideboard in the dining-room. She 
took her niece all over the house, into all the empty 
rooms, pointing out their beauties and their uses, 
prattling the while of the joys which she was now 
compelled to lose, and gradually passing in review 
the whole of her married life. 

‘To drive about in your own carriage year ofter 
year, paying the tradesmen’s books, to the hour — 
only pretending to think them heavy; full well 
knowing that they were light compared with what 
you could afford— Respected by all, envied, no 
doubt, by many — -knowing that in comfort, if not 
in luxury, you and your dear ones were as wel, 
lodged and found and done for as a duchess and 
•her little lords and ladies could be — and then to be 


•cast on the world at a time of life when youVfc 
come to need ; comfort and ease, and have lost the 
power of fighting your way all over again — naked 
and penniless — For that’s what w«e shall be — are, 
if the truth was known. There’s not a nicknack, 
not a chair ; a spoon, a fork, in all this fine house 
which is ours any longer. All, the creditors’! I 
say it to you, and yet as I speak I do not realise it. 
But it is so. This thimbleful of brandy which I 
now pour out by right belongs to them.’ 

‘But these things are mine — my very own which 
no one has a claim on — except, perhaps Mallock,* 
said the poor soul, on her knees before her open 
wardrobe — late in the afternoon. 

Vivien’s box had arrived, and Mallock,the maid 
had been sent upon an errand by her mistress. 

‘I wanted to get her out of the way, because I 
wish to give you a little present, dear — Heaven 
knows, not much; just one or two odd things 
which may be useful to .you — But she mustn’t 
know. You must put them away and lock your 
trunk before she comes back — ’ 

Vivien protested that she was grateful for the 
kind thought, but indeed needed and could accept 
nothing from an aunt in such dire tribulation 
‘See here, dear,’ said Mrs. Burnett, ignoring 
Vivien’s resistance. ‘This black silk — ah me! I 
: recollect as though it was yesterday, the first time 
I wore it — a grand ladies’ night at the Basket 
Weavers’ — Burnett’s company, you know. They 


showed me how it would stand alone — so rich and 
strong. Keep it dear, till you're full grown and 
* then get it made up again, however you may fancy. 
And this — this amber — As good as new — isn't it?' 

With hurrying, agitated hands, she heaped upon 
the floor the two dresses, some stockings, richly 
trimmed petticoats, a lace scarf or two: letting 
the soft, clinging lace glide slowly through her 
fingers and fall rustling with the sound of a faint 
sigh, feeling, perhaps, poor woman, that these 
were the last tokens of her prosperity slipping 
away from her. 

‘You are not robbing my chicks. They are well 
provided with finery — more than they are likely 
to be able to use. Take them all and put them 
away. Your aunt's last present. They would go 
to Mallock if not you — and I'd sooner one of the 
family had them. There, let's waste no time.' 

She stood over the old unwieldy box while her 
niece removed all the layers of puffed out news- 
papers and packed up her present; and, glancing 
down, observed some odds and ends at the bottom, 
— a worn and tattered leather writing-case, an oval 
photograph frame, and a faded red morocco 
church-service, with brass cross and corners — 
which she quickly understood to be treasured 
relics of the late Mrs. Shelton. 

‘Your mother's — those things? So I thought. 
Always keep them, dear. She was a good woman. 
A patient gentle creature and sorely tried if ever 


there was one — ' and Mrs. Burnett sat down and 
shed a few more tears. 

‘Oh Vi — what men can make us poor women 
suffer may you never know. From my heart I 
pray that you may be happy in your married life — 
when your time comes. 

Tve not done what I might have done for you, 
when it was in my power. I see that now — when 
all the power is gone. I might have had you here, 
made you like one of my own, and ought. I did 
try, dear, suggesting once or twice that I should 
ask you, but Burnett set his face against it — He 
always had a very poor opinion of your father and 
dreaded the connection — and if the truth must out 
—I did too— But he is your father, so I won't say 
anything against him to you.' 

‘No, don't — please, don't — dear Aunt Kate,' 
said Vivien, huskily. 

‘Quick — Turn the key. Matlock!’ cried Mrs, 
Burnett, rising in haste. ‘I heard her voice down- 
stairs. Let's go down. If she caught us here, 
she'd put two and two together and guess what 
I'd been doing.' 

Mrs. Burnett would on this occasion have lost, 
had she laid those odds which she mentioned; for 
very late that night her husband returned. Vivien, 
aroused by the noise he made, heard the stumbling 
feet of the ruined master of the house as he stag- 
gered upstairs to bed. 

She went away next morning without having 


seen her host. She had written, over night, to 
advise Mrs Maitland of her return. 

*You will be surprised to see me home so soon, 
she had said ‘but I hope you will not mind. Papa 
took me for a treat on a steamer and I caught a 
slight cold in the head. My aunt is in great trouble,, 
I shall be back early/ 


VI. 

‘Lamb , was the fashionable word all through the 
term in which Vivien was confirmed. The bishop 
who laid his hands on her and other children was 
unhesitatingly pronounced to be a great lamb. 
Vivien, however, felt that the word should not 
have been used in this connection. A fervour o £ 
religion possessed her; the glory and mystery of 
the sacramental rites filled all her thoughts; and 
the curate of St. Saviour's, gratified by so much 
enthusiasm, presented her with a little Book of 
Meditations. 

‘There/ she said to the girls. ‘Read that and 
you'll feel as — ■' 

But the girls interrupted her at once . 

‘Why should he give it youl He never gave any- 
thing to us. I call it rather mean of him — and you 
must have made up to him like one o'clock. 
You're deeper than you seem, Vivien.' 

She turned from them in disgust. She was dis- 
gusted by their shallow temperaments. Nothing 
<eould make a lasting impressing. They had 
^sobbed — some of them — at the altar rails on 
Easter morn; and now, after a month, it was as 
though all had been written in water. Nothing of 


grace was left to them: they were as they had 
ever been — schoolgirls. 

‘And let's hope/ said Miss Bartley, the new 
unsympathetic governess, ‘it won't prove a flash 
in the pan with you, too.' 

Flash in the pan? Vivien hated the words. 
They haunted her. Even on her knees : they made 
her blood boil with resentment, as she prayed in 
the middle of the night? And she would hop out 
of bed and get to work again: and the more she 
shivered in her thin night-gown, the more the hard 
boards hurt her knees, the better pleased was 
Vivien. Sometimes she really felt that she had 
soared upward— by ail infinitesimal flight when 
considered in relation to the journey before her, 
but still sufficient, quite sufficient, to leave Miss 
Bartley out of sight. ‘Is that a flash in the pan?' 
some inner voice seemed to ask as she crept back 
to bed; ‘Or this?' as she glided into St. Saviour's 
Church in good time for the six a. m. celebration. 

Time at Arundel House, though nothing might 
be done with it, went so fast that one could not 
count the months and years. When was it that 
Vivien, tidying a drawer, soiled her fingers with 
the thick layer of dust on the Book of Meditations? 
When was the Sunday morning that, sleeping late, 
she lost her breakfast, and received public reproof 
for missing the start of the crocodile for the eleven 
o'clock service? Certainly the time came when 


<she was grateful to unsympathetic Miss Bartley 
for never saying T told you so.’ 

Perhaps the end of her religious fit synchronised 
with the beginning of her great horror of her own 
intolerable ugliness. Inexplicably, the horror of 
it burst upon her. She was tall and ungainly, she 
told herself, with a miserable wisp of uninterestin 
.hair. Aa she thought about it, she felt that all eyes,, 
male or female, were upon her; that all must see 
what she herself onw saw. She sould read their 
thoughts; she scould hear their unpoken words. 
There goes the ugly girl from Arundel House!! 
'Oh why do s Mrs. Maitland bring that ugly girl t© 
divine service? She is so ugly that when I look 
her way I sing out of tune/ 

Marian had gone, and there was no one to com- 
fort her. Thus Vivien suffered without comfort. 
She believed this was something beyond the 
efficacy of prayer. But still she prayed in thought. 
; *Oh take away this horror from me. I ask it in 
humbleness, not in vanity. Give to your chosen 
beauty. Deny to me the incomparable graceful- 
mess of Ethel Turner, but take away from me this 
horror of uglness such as in the world has never 
been before. Give me at least a sufficiency of hair. 

At last, she told something of her trouble to Miss 
Bauermann. The good Fraulein had long since 
returned to her thoughtful, strenuous fatherland:: 
but now she was back again to oblige Mrs. Maitr 
iland by filling a gap for one summer term only. 


‘Ail that what you have imagined;' said Miss 
Bauermann, stoutly, ‘is illusion, chimera, nonsense. 

Vivien in her elation made Miss Bauermann say 
at again. Chimera. Moonshine! It was rapture 
to believe; and for fifty yards, as they walked side 
by side, the horror was gone. 

‘I myself, as a child, have suffereff .in precisely 
Hie same «way/ continued Miss Bauermann 
‘Joost all the silly fears which you have felt,. Yet 
I have grown up to be as well as another in aspect 

Despair ! Then it is true, after a 1. No chimera, 
.'but fact; and the horror descends again. 

‘Such fancies in the mind/ said Miss Bauermann 
(chatting cosily, 'are like wind lin an empty box, 
Scienz, Vi, you are more than old enough to put 
with Logic added; and Speculation also; so that 
you ase careful it has its broad base on those other 
two. Have you read yet your Darwin, your 
Huxley, your Carpenter, your Spencer, and your 
Mill, Smith, Carlyle?' 

And she reeled off a list for holiday reading. 

‘No? Not read? Oh you English girls! Then 
'.do so, Vi. Think, think and learn of the wonders 
which are outside you, and the wonders inside you 
of which now you are ever thinking shall draw in 
and grow smaller and smaller to what in truth 
they are— joost nothing at all.' 

It was not flattering, but it was somehow most 
comforting. 

•As a wonder outside oneself, an antidote to 


introspection for the use of all the school, the 
astounding news which Miss Bauermann soon per- 
mitted herself to publish must have proved very 
valuable. Fraulein was going to be married. At 
first the girls could give no credence to the wildly 
improbable rumour; but at last tehy were forced 
to admit its truth. There was his portrait: a 
stout Teuton in pince-nez and in uniform, with his 
face most horribly slashed and seamed. 

‘Oh/ cried one young lady, ‘it is like the Arme- 
nian atrocities at Madame Tussaud's!' 

‘Those are the stigmata of his courage/ said 
Miss Bauermann, proudly. 

The girls said they had no doubt of his courage. 

‘But how did he get them? In war?' 

‘In play, Joost in play. Komm! You have 
looked enough at my brave soldier-lover.' 

Obediently following the Bauermann advice— 
as a duty' to the departed — Vivien gave herself a 
short, sharp course of heavy reading. She read the 
Origin of Species , and, without always knowing 
whether the author was speaking of a beetle or a 
geological formation, she enjoyed the marvellous 
intricate argument as though it had been the plot 
of a novel. What a lamb was Mr. Darwin himself 
— what a patient, ingenious lamb to have deduced 
order from chaos! She was convinced at once. 
But the sadness of it. Nature's cruel laws, the 
frightful unceasing carnage — so many to be de- 


stroyed: so few to Be saved. It is worse — far 
worse — than the gloomy world-survey of papa at 
Greenwich. 

She read her Darwin, her Huxley, her Spencer 
and her Carlyle and her Adam Smith, but her Mill 
was one too many for her. She was desperately in 
earnest. 

‘I cannot say that I quite like such subjects for 
girls/ said Mrs. Maitland, when Vivien talked 
volubly and excitably of sexual selection and the 
extraordnary modifications produced by the 
judicious crossing of domestic animals. 

4 Why not?’ cried Vi. ‘There’s nothing agnostic 
in what I am saying.’ 

‘No, no. But I think this class of what I may 
term technical knowledge does not sound .quite 
pretty on a young lady’s lips.’ 

Vivien was almost sorry for the palpable, ignor- 
ance of Mrs. Maitland, and had to deal very lightly 
with her in argument. She pinned for the good 
Bauermann, whom she fancied she might now have 
met on equal terms. 

In political economy Mrs. Maitland was weaker 
even than on natural history. She positively could 
not see the simplest, most elemental things 
clearly. 

‘Of course food is the only real measure,’ said 
Vi. ‘Take, for instance, the case of a poor peasant 
and his wife. They marry and there is enough for 
both, and a surplus. In two years they have a 


family of five or six children to provide for also. 

Here Mrs. Maitland was moved to mirth , and 
tried to pooh pooh one. 

‘Oh Vi, after all your Darwin and Huxley, what 
a child you aref 


m 


It was the merest pretence, or make-believe, of 
a real shop. Above the window, there was a white 
board like a giant’s visiting-card out of a Christmas 
pantomime. Mrs. Wardrop— pointed in a cursive 
copperplate character — and the address, No. 700, 
Sloane Street. 

In expansive moments, Mrs. Wardrop, the lady- 
proprietress, was fond of giving to lady customers 
the genesis of her triumphant enterprise. Driving 
down Sloane Street and lolling back in her carriage, 
an idle musing lady, she had observed the vacant 
premises between the auctioneer’s and the music- 
seller’s; and had been instantly taken with the 
situation; and rolling away towards the fashion- 
able crowd in the Park had, as it were, carried the 
empty shop with her — an incongruous mental 
phantom amidst the polite assembly of other ladies 
also out for their afternoon drive. If, by way of 
freak — and never were ladies more freakish than 
at the present day — she desired to set up in busi- 
ness, that would be the shop for her money. Thus 
mused Mrs. Wardrop, bowing right and left to the 
ladies of her acquaintance. It was in the early 
days of the lady shopkeeper. All over the west 
end of London the amateur tradeswoman was 
making her feeble, half frightened first appearance 


before the gross public of the pavements. Trivial 
little teashops, flower shops, and bonnet shops — 
in which gentility and commerce danced a brief 
breakdown and then put up the shutters — were 
to be seen in every street. Here and there the 
amateur seemed to be holding her own, to be 
dancing the desperate, half-hysterical jig to the 
music of a faint applause, and to be keeping out of 
the auditorium that stern critic of amateur per- 
formances— the Official Receiver. A peeress was 
making a game fight in Bond Street; and Mrs. 
Marchant and her daughters and cousins were, it 
was said, running their much-advertised tea- 
rooms into a substantial success. But, mused 
Mrs. Wardrop, ‘you aren't likely to grow fat on 
cups of tea.' 

Then the light had come. The blouse, the 
ladies' blouse, just the blouse for ladies. Only the 
blouse ! ‘And now — well now, I am Mrs. Wardrop,' 
the lady proprietress would modestly say, closing 
her chapter of genesis, bowing out the lady custo- 
mer, and turning to her lady assistants. 

The serving girls doubted if their employer had 
ever kept a carriage; they thought she used the 
word ‘lady' too frequently; but they admired her. 
They saw in Mrs. Wardrop a strong brave creature 
who had solved the great sex-problem, who, 
without male support, had fought and won, who 
had only one absolutely unpardonable fault. 
Although fast growing fabulously rich, she still 
appeared to think that twenty shillings a week 


was a handsome salary for a young lady assistant. 

Instead of the usual big sheets of glass in the 
shop window, there were small, oddly-shaped 
divisions — diamonds and rectangles with bevelled 
edges and oak supports. All that one was per- 
mitted to see through the window was a high, oak- 
edges and oak supports. All that one was per- 
mitted to see through the window was a high, oak- 
panelled screen — a wooden wall to guard the 
interior mystery from the prying street; a narrow 
strip of parquetry; a Louis Treize chair, with 
back and seat choicely upholstered in tapestry. 
Upon the apestried seat of the chair, negligently 
thrown down upon it a though by accident, there 
lay one blouse — no more! 

The shop itself was like a long, double drawing- 
room. This was The note’ which Mrs. Wardrop 
had rigorously set herself to strike; and, in her 
first charge to her original assistants, she laid down 
certain broad principles. 

'Your attitude is simply that of young ladies in 
your drawing-room, running over the wardrobe — 
for — for the lark of the thing. The customer is 
neither more nor less than a lady visitor. Be as 
nonchalant as you please, but courteous always — 
a lady is always courteous. Treat all as though 
on a perfect equality. There can be no discrimin- 
ating among ladies. The highest in all the land 
can be no more than that — a lady. And that is 
how we will serve them here.’ 

But all this was long ago. 


VIII. 


The duke was coming home. Growling voices 
of men, squealing voices of women, behind the 
baize doors, and none to censure: mice that 
scamper and frolic behind the wainscot and no cat 
to frighten them into silence; a maid and a man 
dancing a minute on a stone floor while half the 
menial herd laughs and claps i,ts hands — let them 
dance, let them shout. Their duke is coming home. 

Count the weeks, count the days— mv duke is 
coming home. Now drive me over the hills and 
far away, drive me fast and drive me long; drive 
me higher and higher, along the ridge where the 
sea-wind blows and the sea-birds call; drive me 
here, drive me there — but don’t drive me out of 
my mind by chattering of Sir William’s advice not 
to overdo it. My boy is coming home. 

He will be here by the' fifteenth of September, 
by the thirtieth, by the first week of October — at 
the very latest. And he will not go back again. 
No one can want a duke who is not a soldier by 
profession out there now. The second colony has 
been annexed. The real war is done. Nothing 
remains but clearing up, tidying, making straight. 
The work may be short, may be long. But no 
matter how long it takes, sooner or later the 


remnant of our stubborn foe must yield — dry-eyed 
still beneath the raining blows, must cry to Des- 
tiny, if not to us: ‘Pax. Give me pax.’ 

He has been recovering of his wounds at Cape 
Town. Hit in three places — but the fairies have 
made him whole. Three fairies seized and dragged 
with their fairy hands the three hot spears made 
by the flying bullets, and saved their fairy prince. 
And now that we know all, we know that the glory 
of the ride of death was his. To him and to that 
dark knight, his dead lieutenant, is the glory. It 
was the duke’s command. When these two fell 
the deed had been done, the riders were close to 
their goal, freedom for the voiceless guns and the 
huddled men had been fought for and gained. 
Honour has been given to him: here and there, 
the world has acclaimed him . He is a duke now — 
whatever he was when he sailed away last year. 
The fairies can find his title now in men’s hearts, 
as well as in the pages of the red-bound books. 

We know now that in morbid vision we have 
bitterly wronged those brave bearded men. 
When they carried him away, they were gentle as 
women to their stricken enemy. He lay in no 
rocky place, but in a farmhouse bed; and the eyes 
that watched the lamp were as skilled as they 
were kind. When our marching men came after 
many days to the house among the hills, they 
found, pinned above the sick man’s bed, a letter 
from the queer, badly-dreSsed- general. This 


trousered general-by-courtesy explained that he 
had moved on only a few hours ago; he had been 
wanting to send a message to say that the young 
man was all right, would have been glad to send 
the young man himself, but, as they knew, had 
been kept very busy during the last fortnight. 
That was their fault, not his. He hoped to see 
them all again before long, but he could not stop 
now. 

He had told her to stay here till he came back : 
had made her promise to stay with granny till 
then. But now in five days she would be free. 
When the good ship touched the quay she might 
go. He had not meant that she need stay to see 
him — he had not said so. He was safe and well — 
it could not be necessary to wait, to look at him 
with her own eyes, to make quite sure. That was 
the privilege of relations, not of chance acquaint- 
ance. It would be better to go while the hawsers 
strained and the floating walls crept to their berth. 
Then should begin her long-delayed visit to Mrs. 
Gardiner. 

‘Take up your pen/ said Lady Colwyn sternly, 
when she had been told of Vivien’s letter to kind 
Mrs. Gardiner. 

‘Now. Are you ready? Say this — in your own 
words — Your previous letter was written under a 
misapprehension. You are obliged to her for say- 
ing that she will receive you, but you are not 


leaving Hawkridge at present. Lady Colwyn can- 
not spare you just now, but you will hope for the 
suggested pleasure at some future date/ 

Lady Colwyn, sitting very upright in her chair, 
had regained all of her old powers: Lady Colwyn 
must be obeyed. 

‘No, my dear/ said Lady Colwyn later. ‘I 
could not spare you. It is not probable that More- 
cambe will pay me a long visit — he will have so 
much — so very much to do. Two or three days 
is all I should hope for. And the — without you — * 
I should feel lonely— very lonely indeed/ 

And again, on another occasion, she indirectly 
referred to this subject. 

‘Miss Shelton. I trust that you have no 
thought me unkind to you — or forgetful of-your 
kindness to me — since our good news came. I like 
your company. If I have seemed neglectful — ' 

‘Oh no, Lady Colwyn/ 

‘If I have. It is only because I have been 
absorbed — by my happy thoughts/ 

Now, on the third of October — this last of the 
five interminable days — Lady Colwyn was very 
restless. Her happy thoughts had failed to make 
the clock hands move: the wheels of her carriage 
turning fast had seemed to stand still: two long 
drives had taken only fragments from the fulness 
of the hours. 

In the evening she began to walk about the 


j*oom. She could not listen when any one read tq 
her; she could not understand when she read to 
herself. At last she sat down. 

'Miss Shelton/ 

'Yes/ 

'Where are those papers ?’ 

‘They are all on the table. Which one would 
you like?’ 

'No, no. Your own papers. Those papers you 
spoke of — family history. Bring them. I would 
like to see them at once/ 

'Yes — but it is rather late/ 

'Do as I ask you. I cannot sleep. They may 
interest me. They will interest me very much/ 

Lady Colwyn must be obeyed. Vivien obeyed 
her, and soon had brought her heavy packet and 
was breaking seals and cutting twine and tape. 

'Push the table nearer. Move the lamp. Clear 
the table — throw the things on the floor — be 
quick. . . . And now/ added Lady Colwyn. 
'Look at the papers as you hand them to me. 
There may be documents of quite a private 
nature/ 

The thought had come to Vivien that there 
might be things which only a daughter’s eye 
should see — long-faded photographs, silken hair 
in folded tissue — and she was glad that the great 
lady had also thought of this. 

But there was nothing at all. It was a parce 
of such rubbish as is first put in strong boxes 


because some one lacks the courage to burn it, 
and in strong boxes ever after it remains — a 
and in strong boxes ever after it remains — a 
legacy from the lazy-brained to the foolishly- 
sentimental. Here was a surrender of a lease; an 
extract from a stranger’s will that ought to be 
with some scheduled title-deeds — or ought not to 
be there, probably, because it had never been 
really wanted; two fire insurance policies relating 
to houses that had crumbled into dust; the copy 
of a steward's copy of somebody’s admission to 
the roll of a manor that had long since vanished 
oh the map; and so on. 

Then there were paybills, cuttings from news- 
papers, invitation 1 cards, the first act of a blank 
verse tragedy in a lady’s best Italian hand, etc., — 
rubbish and more rubbish with which to cover the 
table. 

And at last came family history— scraps of it, 
leaves of it, pamphlets of it — printed and in MS. : 
the preposterous, futile stuff which pious aunts 
accumulate: the meagre treasure of a century’s 
search. Here, as Vivien meekly handed them 
over, were extracts from volumes about the landed 
gentry; that carefully copied page in which we 
have put our best foot forward and tried to ruffle 
and swagger with the boldest; a letter from her 
editor offering thanks for the valuable contribu- 
tion; unknown names of dead foolish people: 
Tumours, Garters, Fieldings, etc. Vivien was 


ashamed of the foolish stuff ‘as dutifully she laid it 
before the great lady. 

But it amused Lady Colwyn. It was surprising 
to see how family history was calming her nerves, 
soothing her excited brain. She read it greedily 
and steadily, in her old masterful- way, with the 
lamp close to her thin, proud nose. After a little 
while Vivien retired to her chair, her book, and 
her thoughts. 

Thank you/ said Lady Colwyn presently, as 
she put down something and picked up something 
else. Thank you. It is very interesting/ 

It was growing late, but still Lady Colwyn read 
hungrily. 

‘Lady Colwyn — don't you think — V 

‘No. Be silent please. I am deeply interested/ 

She was busy with a peculiarly noxious piece. 

She was busy with a peculiarly noxious piece. 
It was in the form of a pamphle , hat apparently 
had proved too rich and loo long for publication. 
There was an endorsement which stated with 
quiet indignation that it had been refused by more 
than one editor in the year sixty-four. I,n this 
careful work of ample detail we were plainly put- 
ting our best foot forward and covering all the 
ground with it. This was the family, on the 
mother’s side, of our young friend,. These and 
none others are the dead, men that stand behind 
her. Now we shall see. Now we shall see. They 
were wonderfully good names— some of them. 


Suddenly with her open hand Lady Colwyn gave 
the table a bang that would have been not un- 
worthy of Mrs. Wardrop in her lighter moods. 

‘Oh what is it Lady Colwyn?’ 1 

‘Nothing — at present. Sit still.’ 

It wasonly a name that had made Lady Colwyn 
bang the table. Vivien, not reading, but with eyes 
upon her book, did not see the expression in the 
proud old face as presently Lady Colwyn looked 
at her over the top of the rejected paper. 

It was there then — Lady Colwvn’s lips shook as 
she thought of it — the golden current, the divine 
fire, the flash that can only come out of the dim 
past from the hearts of dead men. Her theories 
were splendidly upheld. She had been conscious 
of it herself very soon : had known really that she 
could not be mistaken. The great Scottish lord 
had seen it at once — in ten minutes. Something 
must be there. But who, who could have guessed 
that there was this behind the flash.? 

And again Lady Colwyn read about the name. 
‘Married 1785 the Honourable and Reverend 
Henry George Augustus St. Keverne, sometime 
rector of Little Frensham; honorary canon of 
Gloucester; Author of ‘An Ancient House , Annals 
of the St. Kevemes,’ etc., etc.’ Books that we 
can find in our own library! A personage, this 
dead man, whose life can be traced: not a myth, 
but one of us, who certainly lived, whose blood— 


out blood — now flows in the veins: of this our lady- 
in-waiting and our cousin. 

‘I would like/ said Lady Golwvn, ‘to retain one 
of these documents, if you will allow me. I will 
tell you why. But not now. It is late, dear, it is 
late. . . . Yes, ring/ and Lady Oolwyn crossed 
the room, and an incredible thing occurred. 

She kissed her lady-in-waiting. 

‘Good-night. That, — that was a kiss of welcome, 

. . . Because — because you are not going to Mrs. 
Gardiner’s — because you consented to stay with 
me/ 

She was going to see him. He had asked to see 
her in the library. He had come late last night. 
He had been very tired after his journed : he was 
not really strong yet. Granny had see him last 

night. 

On this October morning the blackbirds and the 
thrushes had begun to sing again and the sun was 
blazing from a June sky. She stood outside the 
library door, waiting for a few moments, and the 
music of the birds throbbed in her ears. 

The room was full of sunlight; the birds were 
singing; he had risen from a sofa and was standing 
beneath his picture; he was calling her Vivien. 

‘Vivien, I have so many things to tell you. I 
am so glad to see you. I have so many things to 
tell you/ 


The suriligh tdazzled her ; the song of the birds 
confused her; he was calling her Vivien. 

'May I tell you the truth, Vivien? I want to 
tell you the truth- -however ugly it sounds. But 
1 don’t know where to begin.’ 

He was dressed in grey; he was bronzed by the 
sea voyage, but he was very thin; the streaming 
sunbeams showed her the place upon his forehead 
where death had grazed him; he was holding her 
trembling hand in his. 

Then he talked to her and she listened, scarcely 
understanding, scarcely wanting to understand. 
The offended birds had ceased to sing; the out- 
raged sun had pulled a cloud before its angry face. 
His voice was music and his smile eould make the 
sunlight. 

He was telling her what he had thought that 
day when she hurt her mouth; and the faint scar 
throbbed as his eyes sought and found it. He was 
telling her what he thought when she hid herself 
frll her friends. He was telling her about th'e et 
war. He was telling her about that dread knight, 
Claude Stanford. 

'Vivien, I must tell you the truth however ngly 
it sounds. . . . 

'We are always coming together — he and I. 
And this is what I thought. I thought, The dog 
will shoot me. As soon as we are .engaged — at the 
first chance ; this dog will shoot me. Wasn’t that 


a caddish thought? He did not do it. He was 
doing better things than that. 

‘So on we went — side by side. It seemed that 
I couldn’t get away from his snarling teeth and 
his scowling eyes. But you see, Vivien, the devil 
is never as black as he is painted. Down I went — 
like an ass — with fever. Not enteric. Something 
beastly that they keep out there — for the visitors. 
And he stayed back — to nurse me. 

‘It was gall and wornwood. He was giving me 
my life, not taking it away. I was too bad — to 
refuse the favour. I was pretty bad. They 
thought it was all up with me. He thought so; 
and then one night he withdrew his lies. 

‘“Morecambe,” he whispered — there were peo- 
ple in other beds — “how much did you care about 
that girl from the shop?” Then I told him how 
much.’ 

His voice was music — his smile was a white 
sword made of sunbeams that pierced one’s breast. 

‘“Suppose,” he whispered, “she had been as 
virtuous as pretty. What would you have done?” 
Then I told him. . . that I would have crawled 
to your feet — asked you to put your foot upon my 
neck — asked you to put your foot upon my heart 
and trample it into the dust — but asked you to 
forgive me. 

‘“Well,” he said, “she was. I lied about it. 
But listen, Morecambe — not a braggart’s lie — out 
of sheer policy. I felt certain it was only a ques- 


tion of time. She was afraid of me. She must give 
way. I didn’t want you chipping in.” 

That cured me. I went to sleep and dreamt 
about you. It was what you called the respite 
from pain. Vivien, if you had been my own sister 
I could not have been happier than I was to know 
that you were pure. 

‘Well, after the fall of Pretoria we went on, and 
there he was again — and Vivien — it is a horrible 
thing to confess, but I thought again: The dog 
will shoot me now . He won’t let me go home. 

‘But he did not do it. He had better thingson 
do. Vivien, he was doing splendidly well. Wheo 
they said they would give me a chance and I heard 
that we were to be side by side again — I knew that 
it was an honour to have him with me. . * . You 
know what happened. It was just at the end. . . . 
“Morecambe, we are not going to be stopped?” . 
He did not mean us to be stopped. Nothing could 
stop him — he went on; and, foremost fighting, 
fell. ... I did my best. I did all I could, 
fell. ... I did my best. I did all I could. 

‘Now I have told you the truth — all the truth, 
all mv thought of vou. Now can you forgive me?’ 

‘Yes,’ 

‘Did you ever love this man?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Vivien/ and he stood before her with out- 
stretched arms. ‘Vivien ! Are you going to prove 
your forgiveness? Are you going to be my wife? J 


‘Your wife?’ 

His arms were about her, but she slid through 
his arms till she knelt upon the ground. And like 
a goose-gilr — like a very foolish goose-girl — she 
began to cry. 

‘Oh my prince. Lift me up, or leave me here. 
Do with me what you like. Oh my prince .... 

But the prince lifted up his goose-girl — he must 
have read the pretty, foolish tales ! 

‘Unworthy? Hush. My sweet, my silly Vivien. 
You are good, you are brave, your are beautiful. 
What more should a man want in his wife?’ 

So he placed her by his side, in the sunlight, on 
the sofa ... in the sunlight, on his throne. 



AUG 10 





